Drs. David and Yvonne Freeman are the recipients of the 2013 NCTE Outstanding Educator in the English Language Arts Award. This award recognizes a distinguished national or international educator who has made major contributions to the field of language arts in elementary education.

Join the Elementary Section Steering Committee as they celebrate the Freeman's contributions to the English language arts at the Elementary Section Get-Together, Thursday, November 21, during the NCTE Annual Convention in Boston, Massachusetts.

Also come listen as they discuss "Essential Practices for Developing Academic Literacy with English Learners Living Between Worlds" in Session G.49 on Satruday morning.

Both are educators in the Department of Language, Literacy, and Intercultural Studies of the College of Education at the University of Texas–Brownsville. David is a professor of reading, ESL, and literacy, and Yvonne is a professor of bilingual education.

For over the last 25 years, the Freemans have worked with teachers to help them improve instruction for emergent bilingual students and translate theory into practice to provide the best education for all their students. Both are interested in effective education for English language learners and have written and presented regularly at international, national, and state conferences on research, theory, methods, and models of bilingual education. In addition to presentations at the NCTE Annual Convention, they have presented at the National Association of Bilingual Education (NABE), Texas Association of Bilingual Education (TABE), International Reading Association (IRA), and Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL).

The Freemans have reviewed methods of teaching English as a second language and have worked extensively in schools in the U.S. explaining how teachers can follow a principled approach and teach both language and content organized around themes to promote academic success for ELLs. By explaining what academic language is at different levels—text, paragraph, sentence, and word—the Freemans have shown teachers how they can develop both content and language objectives to promote academic English.

The Freemans have written extensively about types of English language learners and their academic language needs on the topics of second language teaching, biliteracy, bilingual education, Spanish children’s literature, and second language acquisition. They have published articles and book chapters jointly and separately, and their book Between Worlds: Access to Second Language Acquisition received the Mildenberger Award from the Modern Language Association for outstanding research in the field of foreign and second language teaching.